


home

by antikytheras



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, dog POV, i'm actually completely lost on how to tag this, just your good ol' regular makkachin-meets-viktor story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 11:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11577111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antikytheras/pseuds/antikytheras
Summary: Makkachin finds his home.





	home

**Author's Note:**

> watch this headcanon get rekt by the yoi movie or something

The first time he opens his eyes, it is dark, and he is surrounded by his brothers and sisters.

Something stinks in the air. Blindly, he noses around for the warmth that he'd left behind for this strange, new world.

There. He burrows into his mother's side and breathes. The horrid stench fades away— lingers in the background, something easy to ignore. His brothers and sisters huddle with him, and he knows that they are a unit, a pack. He will play and run with them in large grassy plains, under the sun, under the watchful gaze of their mother.

This is safety. This is home.

In three seconds, this is how he will lose it:

A loud bang. Sharp light. The siblings swarm in, under mother's warm darkness. Mother growls, angry and scared, and he will feel her muscles tense under thin skin. The siblings swarm deeper, hiding from the noises-like-hunting-calls.

Then Mother's warmth is gone, and the cold air rushes in to fill her void. The siblings whimper, lost and searching for warmth, for home.

Something grabs under his belly and hoists him into the air. He will struggle and squirm, but the hand-is-warm and he-is-cold.

So he will nestle in that soft, gentle touch, close his eyes. Snuggles blindly into warmth, and that is how he loses it all.

\--

The next few times he opens his eyes, it is dim.

The walls are closing in— he can barely fit into this small, new space. He tries to uncurl his body, stretch his limbs to wake them from the heaviness of sleep, but he barely moves a muscle and already the walls are there to oppose him.

It's restricting, confining.

He whimpers and turns, looking for his siblings. Or at least, he tries. He barely gets an eyeful of the light coming in through a lattice of bars before his ears smack against the sides of his cage.

Slowly, he drags his body to the light.

He sees other cages, all the same size as his, dark and smelly and buzzing with fleas. Here and there he hears a pitiful yelp, silenced by the sharp smack of a rod onto the offending cage.

His captor yells something in a harsh tongue.

Each day, the puppies remember a little more of the one before, until the room is silent and they have learned that to move even a muscle is an act of futility.

The food is plentiful, and the pups swallow it down obediently. They have never known the taste of any other food, so they continue to clean the last bits off their flimsy food bowls even after their bodies reject the inedible meat.

Once in a while, their captors bring in a mother-that-is-not-his, but she is gentle and encourages them to drink her milk, shares her warmth in a cold, lonely room, and so they trust.

And oh, how they trust.

\--

Soon, he is brought to a bright place, and this time his cage is much bigger.

He yelps, scampers around, and his new captors do nothing to stop him. They feed him food that he does-not-throw-up, and he has a clear view of his fellow puppies in the neighbouring box-cages.

Every day, small humans come to his cage and coo, making their strange noises. Once in a while, they smack the plastic walls with their chubby hands, and the sound burns loud into his ears.

One day, when he wakes, he finds himself in reflective cold-bright eyes.

In shock, he yelps, leaping backward, and crashes into the wall.

It rattles the entire row of cages. His neighbour opens one brown eye, looking supremely unimpressed, and then goes back to his slumber, his tail swishing back-and-forth like a cattail by the riverbed.

The human child crouched in front of his box-cage laughs, but does not move from his position perched on his toes and arms around his knees.

He is used to children who come right up to the glass, press their faces against the walls and stab their little fingers at him as if they could pierce him through the thin plastic.

He is not used to children who sit back and watch him, fingers curled round one knee and drumming out an unknown rhythm.

The child rests his chin on his knees and smiles. It's a strange smile, not-quite like the ones he is used to seeing from noisy, overzealous kids.

He watches the child until his eyelids grow heavy and just like that, they fall shut.

\--

The child comes to watch him sleep for three days before bringing him home.

From the confines of his cage, he watches the way the light bounces off his silver hair when he speaks, tugging animatedly at an adult human's coat and pointing at the-box-that-he-stays-in. The child has long hair that curls round his neck and ribs like a protective blanket, and when he jumps, it jumps with him.

The child's voice sounds strange and dream-like, echoed consonants and hollow vowels bouncing through his ears like a morning dew slipping off a leaf and falling through a still pond.

On the second day, he works up the nerve to frolic closer to the wall between him and the human. The human's smile goes bright-and-happy, like the sun streaming in through tired grey clouds saturated with the sweat of unending hard work.

Any day now, the clouds will open up, and the rain will come pouring down.

Even through a foggy glass wall, he can recognise the most primal form of pain, and his pack-instincts urge him to console the child he has started to think of as a brother.

But maybe the human child does not need his help after all, because he tries, sweet-and-cajoling-and-smart in getting what he wants, but the adult has bright eyes too, eyes bright with familiarity and wry fondness, and so he does not succumb to the child's traps and hunting-methods on the first day, or the second.

It takes three days of tugging for the adult human to relent, and three days is what it takes for him to leave for home.

\--

The child agonises over his name for all of five days before settling on Makkachin.

In those five days, Makkachin learns that Viktor straps knives to his feet and plays on ice instead of a grassy field.

He watches the power and grace in the young child's form as he leaps and spins and twists across the ice, and knows that Viktor does not need a guard dog to save him from any big-scary predators.

But when the days grow dark and the rink grows empty, he learns to save him from himself.

When the last skater exits the rink, he bounds up to the boundary between ice and not-ice and whines.

Food might not be a priority for Viktor, but it is for Makkachin.

He whines again, louder this time, when Viktor shows no sign of stopping, instead continuing to spin-and-jump in some complex routine.

Sulkily, Makkachin goes back to the benches and lies on his empty belly.

Moments later, he hears the heavy thud of Viktor's skates coming up the short flight of steps, and he perks up.

Food is coming.

Viktor's saying something that sounds apologetic, but Makkachin only pays attention to his hands untying his skates because that means that he finally gets to go home.

He bounds off the benches and onto the floor, sniffing at Viktor's bloody-bruised feet. Viktor flinches when he noses at the wounds, but his hands are gentle when he picks Makkachin up and places him in his lap.

He's saying something again, and although Makkachin doesn't know what he's saying he hears the regret and frustration in his voice even as he tenderly offers Makkachin the best head rubs.

Makkachin curls up and snuggles, listening to the beat of Viktor's pulse while his tears wet his fur.

Eventually, Viktor stops crying and the light comes back into his eyes.

Makkachin jumps off and bounds over to the door, wagging his tail impatiently. He's ignored his hunger for long enough.

Viktor laughs and picks up his skates and his bag, runs out the door and beckons for Makkachin to follow.

'Come on, let's go home.'

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> adopt don't shop
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/_antikytheras)


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